Ogród Botaniczny Roślin Leczniczych Uniwersytetu Medycznego, Wrocław

This is the Medical University’s Garden of Medicinal Plants: a working botanical garden where plants are studied for the substances they contain and for their uses in treatment. It belongs to the university’s Department of Biology and Pharmaceutical Botany, so its paths and beds serve research as well as teaching. Professor Józef Mądalski, a botanist, created the garden in nineteen forty-six on land that had belonged to the botanist Paul Rüster.

The garden and the villa within its grounds now have heritage protection. Its collection is organised like a compact world tour of useful plants. There is an alpine section for mountain species, an arboretum of trees, and a Far Eastern experimental collection investigating how species from that region adapt here.

Greenhouses hold tropical and subtropical plants; other areas focus on herbal raw materials, spices, and plant classification. Nearly one thousand nine hundred species and varieties are cultivated here, including about four hundred under glass. Medicinal plants listed in pharmacopoeias occupy five thousand square metres. The grounds also preserve part of a riverside forest about one hundred and fifty years old, plus five trees designated as natural monuments.